First things first: That was bad. Really bad. Reynaldo Lopez is booty, and the White Sox, though a near-.500 team at the All-Star break, had lost seven in a row, as the regression monster came in hot for their poor first-half run differential.
It felt even worse coming off those final three games in New York. The eighth-inning implosion on Tuesday followed by the double-header sweep on Thursday.
We were out of New York; we thought we were safe.
But alas, baseball doesn’t work that way.
The White Sox got ahead in the first inning, thanks to some shoddy defense—a trend that reared its ugly head time and time again on Friday—but the Rays had a nice response.